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Saturday, April 12, 2008
This week's "Orny Inside the Insider"
Here is my latest segment for THE INSIDER -- that we are calling for now, "Orny Inside the Insider." It was a tough week-- four for four of my top stories got censored for one reason or another. This is all part of working for TV-- transforming myself for a new medium and playing with a new set of rules. I am enjoying it, but my ego would like a banner going across the screen that says, "Orny could be much funnier if he could say everything he wanted." And believe me, nothing I wanted to talk about is even that edgy-- NONE of it would be offensive to anybody born after 1812.
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4 comments:
Weird. Why couldn't the Insider have at least filmed and posted online those "four out of four" rejects that you mention? I can fully understand conservatism when it comes to network television, particularly in their time slot throughout much of the nation, but I'd think that for online fodder, it couldn't hurt to at least try them out! What's the worst that can happen--a viral video? All they have to do is put up the standard "the views reflected here do not necessarily represent The Insider, Entertainment Tonight, the network, blah blah blah" and they're in the clear.
You hear me, Insider? Just let Orny play a bit and see what he can come up with. Censor the critical violations that go on in the industry, but not something that MIGHT ruffle some feathers!
Heck. In TV, the crap just changes intensity, PARTICULARLY when you have your own show. Here's part of an interview that Richard Jeni did back in 2000:
JENI - They say: "Look, here's the deal, we think you're really funny, and we'd like to do a show with you, 'cause you're really good [and you go]: "Okay, here's what I wanna do."
And they go: "No, you can't do that. But tell you what, why don't you just go away, and we'll get a couple of writers who have 16 failed pilots on their resume, and [they'll tell you what to do]."
And then you kind of go, all right, I can either, you know, go along with this, and hope that it becomes successful, and then when it does I'll have more weight to throw around, or I can just be a guy with integrity, and have everyone hate me. That's the way it pretty much works...
Nobody in the process ever really gets what they want; everybody has to make all these compromises. The reason most shows aren't good is because it's very hard for them to have a vision, because it's a cooperative effort, from the old Greek word, "cooperative": "co-", meaning other people, and "-operative" meaning, "these other people are f--king it up!"
The comedian who gets a deal to develop something, he knows that after this opportunity, that's probably [it]. So, he wants to shoot for the moon, and go for the best possible thing that he can; he wants to fight for every little thing because he's not going to have a job with them tomorrow. That's where the clashes start...
Well, it's your name on it. You're the one whose face is on the TV screen. Nobody ever watches a television show and goes: "Boy, that sucked! I bet a network executive screwed it up!" They go: "Boy, that sucked! [That guy] isn't funny!"
That's the trouble, you know, it's your name on it. When it sucks you're the one that takes the bullet... So you're trying to do everything you can to protect yourself, and that isn't, like I said, necessarily the same agenda as the other entities that are involved.
Amen to everything Richard Jeni said. It just makes the poor guy getting the shaft want to say, "Hey, Mr. Briefcase, who's the comedian here, me or you?"
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